Poland’s new export: ownership, not labour

Key takeaways

• Polish firms step up cross-border deals, signalling a shift from catch-up growth to outward expansion.
• Strong growth helps, but higher wages and artificial intelligence challenge parts of Poland’s old “outsourcing” model.
• Several listed Polish champions offer exposure to e-commerce, logistics, retail, finance, energy, and materials.

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For years, the Polish economy “caught up” by selling work, parts, and talent into Western Europe. Now it starts to export something rarer: ownership.

Poland is not “the next Germany”. It does not need to be. It just needs to keep turning economic progress into durable businesses that can compete, buy, and integrate.

Why the timing suddenly looks different

Poland’s growth gap versus parts of Western Europe is a simple starting point. Germany’s gross domestic product (GDP) rose 0.2% in 2025, according to Destatis, the German Federal Statistical Office. Poland’s GDP grew 3.6% in 2025, based on data compiled by Bloomberg using preliminary figures and economist estimates. Faster growth does not guarantee great companies, but it usually helps build stronger balance sheets and more confident boards.

Then comes a “base shift” investors often miss. When a country moves from building roads and factories to building brands and platforms, the winners change. Exporters still matter, but so do retailers, software firms, banks, and logistics networks. That broadening is what makes Poland interesting, not one narrow boom.

Bloomberg frames Poland as a roughly USD 1 trillion economy that now has the scale to play offence. That matters because cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) typically rise when three things align: confidence at home, targets abroad that look attractively priced or under pressure, and management teams that can integrate what they buy.

Buying a foothold beats renting one

The core point is not that Polish firms suddenly “like Germany”. It is that they increasingly choose acquisition over trial-and-error expansion. That is a subtle but important upgrade in strategy.

A practical example is Wirtualna Polska Holding, which agreed to acquireInvia Group for nearly EUR 240 million, aiming to build a larger European travel platform. 

Instead of building a travel brand from zero in a crowded market, it buys distribution, customer relationships, and local know-how in one go. Integration is still hard, but the starting line moves forward.

There is also a deeper shift behind the headlines. Poland built a strong “sell skills to the West” model for years, especially in manufacturing and information technology services. Now two pressures creep in.

First, wages rise. That is a good thing for households, but it narrows the simple “lower cost” edge. Second, artificial intelligence (AI) automates parts of routine work. If you earn money by renting out people by the hour, software that does the same job faster is not a helpful colleague.

That pushes Polish firms up the value chain. Instead of selling time, they aim to sell outcomes: platforms, products, integrated services, and brands. Cross-border acquisitions can speed up that shift, but they also raise the bar on execution.

Ten polish “champions” that map the story.

Think of these as a tour of “where the Polish growth engine shows up”, not a shopping list

• Asseco Poland represents the steadier side of tech: long-term software and services, often tied to big organisations that do not change systems on a whim. A different kind of export is intellectual property.

• CD Projekt sits in gaming, where Poland sells creativity globally rather than capacity locally.

• Wirtualna Polska Holding is a digital media and online services group that increasingly behaves like a platform owner.
  
  

• Allegro is Poland’s best-known e-commerce marketplace, tied to consumer spending and logistics efficiency.

• Dino Polska is a fast-growing grocery retailer, a direct read on domestic demand and execution in “real economy” retail. 

• LPP is an apparel group with multiple fashion brands, sensitive to both consumer demand and international expansion discipline.

• PKO Bank Polski is the country’s largest bank and a proxy for credit growth, savings, and household confidence. 

• PZU is a leading insurer and asset manager, exposed to household wealth and long-term savings behaviour. 

• Orlen is an energy group, influenced by refining margins, fuel demand, and the pace of energy transition investment. 

• KGHM is a global copper producer, linking Poland to the cycle in industry, electrification, and commodity prices.

None of these names is “the Poland trade” on its own. Together, they show why the story is interesting: Poland is not a single theme. It is a mix of consumer growth, industrial muscle, and increasingly global corporate ambition.

Risks that can spoil a good story

The most obvious risk is currency. A stronger or weaker zloty changes returns for foreign investors and can shift competitiveness for exporters. The second risk is politics and regulation, because state influence and policy swings can matter more in some sectors than investors expect.

Finally, cross-border acquisitions come with integration risk. Buying a business is the easy part. Keeping customers, talent, and margins while you combine systems is where many deals disappoint. A simple early warning sign is rising costs without clear revenue progress in the acquired unit.

Building Europe was step one

In the 1990s, many Poles looked west for jobs, brands, and a model to copy. In 2026, a growing number of Polish companies look west with a different question: “what can we buy, improve, and scale?” That shift is not just corporate ambition. It is a signal of a maturing economy, deeper capital, and management teams that think in systems, not seasons.

For investors, the opportunity is not to chase a slogan. It is to follow the plumbing: deal discipline, cash generation, and the ability to integrate across borders. Poland is no longer only building for Europe. It is starting to own parts of it, which is a very different kind of growth.